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With the help of her neighbor and her best pal (Octavia Spencer), Eliza eventually rescues the creature from certain doom. It is essentially a Beauty and the Beast love story, but with a fish. And yet, for as weird as it sounds, it is a very sincere, very touching romance. Del Toro pays homage to the '50s, its horrific politics, and its amazing artists, while expressing love in his own, monstrous-type approach.

If people can get past the admittedly weird form of the romance, this could do very well indeed this Oscar season. Del Toro is sort of owed one for losing the Foreign Language Oscar to Germany the year of Pan’s Labyrinth, and he is considered a gregarious, friendly guy. He kissed all the right rings at Telluride.

Oscar potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress (Hawkins), Best Supporting Actress (Spencer), Best Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor(s) (Jenkins/Shannon), Best Art Direction, Best Score, Best Cinematography

Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool: Annette’s Fading Chance

Annette Bening has famously lost the Oscar twice to Hillary Swank, so it is no surprise that every time she has anything even mildly promising, people think that his may be her turn. She was also the President of the Actors’ Branch, almost became the President of the entire Academy, and is married to golden boy Warren Beatty.

So is the real-life love story Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool finally her moment? Likely not, as the decidedly soapy romance probably will not appeal across the spectrum. She gives it her best as the aging, faded actress having an affair with a young British boy (a stupendous Jamie Bell), but the story suffers a tad from the director’s overreaching into timeline shenanigans. Still, a nomination seems at least a possibility, but a win appears to be slipping away once more.

Oscar potential: Best Actress (Bening)

Hostiles: A Player if It Can Get There

As a part of a tribute to the brilliant actor Christian Bale, the festival screened his new film, the Western called Hostiles. The movie does not yet have distribution, so whether it is even a player this year is up and the air, and I suspect publicists and the studio are looking for prognosticator tea leaves to decide what to do.

My advice would be to dump it like it’s hot, but other Oscar illuminati have taken to it, so what do I know! Bale plays an embittered and battle-tested soldier handed the thankless job of taking his former mortal enemy, a Native American chief, and his family, from New Mexico to Montana through the Wild West in 1892. At the outset of his journey he encounters a brutalized widow played by the always gorgeous Rosamund Pike.

The description ought to be enough to tell you what sort of categories you could expect it to hit at the Academy Awards should it get there. The quality of the story, if you ask me, is quite another matter. I found the film derivative of the ten thousand or so other Westerns made before it, and the characters eventually became irrational. Still, last year I wished for a quick and easy death to Lion and that got six nods.

Oscar potential: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor (Bale), Best Actress (Pike), Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Editing

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